


The White Wolf

by GretchenSinister



Series: My Top 20 Short Gen Fics [20]
Category: Rise of the Guardians (2012)
Genre: Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-08-16
Updated: 2019-08-16
Packaged: 2020-09-02 07:43:39
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,431
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20272399
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/GretchenSinister/pseuds/GretchenSinister
Summary: Original Prompt: "Kid saves sister from freezing and drowning in lake, freezes and drowns in lake himself, is revived by MiM as spirit of winter with frosty powers. that’s almost kind of a cruel irony.So what if instead of thin ice, it had been anything else? A house fire, a pack of wolves, starvation?"Jack dies of exposure while hunting a wolf that attacked a child in his village. When he wakes, he finds that he was able to destroy this threat, though not in a way he expected.It’s a good change, though. He’s still able to protect children from predators.





	The White Wolf

**Author's Note:**

> Originally posted on Tumblr on 10/3/2016.

_I don’t think I’m going to make it home alive,_ Jack admitted to himself. Hours ago, he would have rejected that thought, told himself he couldn’t possibly give up. Hours ago, he hadn’t felt as though he could ever really die.   
  
But then there had been daylight, and he had been sure he was following the right trail. He had thought the most difficult part of getting back was going to be carrying home proof of his successful hunt.  
  
Now, though…he had followed the trail until he was lost, and much further into the woods than he had been prepared to go. He would need to stop and rest in the forest before he got out of it, _if_ he got out of it, and all he had was an old musket and the clothes on his back. That was very little indeed, with the snow lying thick on the ground and most of the animals fled in the harshness of that winter.   
  
It felt like even less when Jack thought of the wolf out there.   
  
Starving and desperate, the wolf had already attacked one of the village children. Though it hadn’t been successful in carrying the child off, many of the villagers agreed that the threat wasn’t gone. A wolf would seek prey in a human settlement only if it had no other options. It likely wouldn’t have any other options till spring, and it hadn’t yet gotten what it wanted.  
  
So Jack had volunteered to find it and kill it. But now, in the dark, it seemed far more likely that the wolf would find him.  
  
There were really only two things to hope for, now. First, he could hope that when the wolf found him, he managed to kill it before it killed him. Second, he could hope that if the wolf did kill him, he’d be enough food for it not to have to venture to the village again before spring.  
  
He flexed his hands painfully. Maybe he shouldn’t even be worrying about the wolf finding him at all. The cold had teeth just as sharp, and it was already here.  
  
Jack kept moving. He didn’t want to die, even though he knew he was going to, and he wouldn’t stop while his mind still controlled his body.  
  


* * *

  
  
_Jack._ A huge, soundless voice called to him and his eyes flew open. He scrambled upright, feeling some awe at his ability to do so, though he couldn’t remember why. He stood in a snowy moonlit clearing surrounded by pines. In the midst of the trampled snow at his feet, a dead wolf lay—a tall, long-boned, but almost skeletal animal. Something had torn out its throat.  
  
Jack shivered, though the night did not feel nearly as brutal as some winter nights could be, and, in any case, he wore a thick fur coat against it. Where had that eerie voice come from? What had killed that wolf? Why had he collapsed next to it?  
  
The longer he stood there, the more questions he realized he had. Questions that frightened him, because he knew that no matter how deep in the forest he was, he should still have the answers. Where had he come from? Where was he going? Where did he belong? Yet his mind was empty, save for the name Jack, and things that seemed like mere background. He knew what snow was, and wolves, and pine trees, and fur coats, but nothing of how they related to him.  
  
He shook his head. He also knew that in weather like this, he had to figure out how to get out of it before he figured out anything else. He knew that whatever had killed this wolf could kill him, too.  
  
He walked toward the trampled path to see if he could gain any more knowledge of what it had been.   
  
He found two sets of wolf tracks. The smaller footprints matched the paws of the dead wolf.  
  
The larger ones were the only other prints leading to the trampled area where Jack had woken.  
  


* * *

  
  
_While the story of ‘Little Red Riding Hood’ most often includes a huntsman of some kind as the heroic figure who releases Little Red Riding Hood and her grandmother from the belly of the Big Bad Wolf, a unique variation has lately been discovered. In certain rural communities of the Northeastern United States and the Great Lakes region, the Big Bad Wolf is defeated not by a huntsman , but by a second wolf. The earliest written version of this variation dates from 1736, but, as with most folk tales, the spoken version no doubt has a much longer pedigree. In this paper we argue that Good Wolf tales are genuine folktales and are worthy of study within the context of the general body of folkloric literature…._  
  
….the relationship to ATU 333 is seen most strongly in the Pennsylvania region, which is also where the earliest written version originates from. In the variations from this area, the Good Wolf is often described as standing on two legs, manipulating objects with his hands, and using weapons to defeat the Big Bad Wolf. In some cases he is referred to as a man and as a wolf within the same sentence. No explanation of this ambiguity is ever given, and as the Good Wolf is always a positive force in these stories, we consider it reasonable to assert that the Good Wolf in the huntsman role is linked only by the slightest ligaments to other werewolf tales….  
  
….in over eighty percent of the Good Wolf variations, the Good Wolf is described as white. The variations in the remaining percentage do not specify the color of the Good Wolf’s fur. While white is frequently a sign for goodness in fairy tales, it is worth consideration that the Good Wolf is most often described as ‘white as snow,’ and rarely ‘pure white’ or ‘clean white’….  
  
….some variations give the Good Wolf the name Jack, but given the preponderance of this name in English language folklore we find it significant only in that it adds to the validity of these tales as folklore….  
  
….evidence shows children were killed by real wolves during particularly harsh winters, so the psychology behind the emergence of Good Wolf tales is particularly worthy of investigation….  
  
….one of the most fascinating aspects of these Good Wolf tales, however, is the minimization of the traditional moral. In most versions of ‘Little Red Riding Hood,’ the moral is clearly that Little Red Riding Hood must not be tempted from her duties to her grandmother, must not stray from the path, and must not talk to strange creatures (men). In all the Good Wolf tales, the Good Wolf makes a point of saying how wicked the Big Bad Wolf was, and, often, how terrible it was for him to use the child’s innocence to his advantage. Notably, in the Good Wolf tales, the Little Red figure is explicitly a young child, and the Big Bad Wolf is more often stated to plan ‘dark and terrible deeds’ rather than to devour the child and grandmother. Almost a third of the children in Good Wolf variants are boys….  
  
….some of the tales collected within this region do take on the quality of folk belief, rather than folktale. Edith Whitsun, 94, told us in an interview that her mother ‘never worried about me and my sisters, no matter the men and strangers about, on account of the white wolf, who she swore she had seen herself. The story in the family—well, among my grandmother and the children, not my grandfather, you see—the story in my family was that the hired hand who never could give account of himself and was always finding my mothers and her sisters alone—that hired hand died of the white wolf. Now, grandfather said it was the threshing machine that gave him the wound that did for him, but my grandmother had to tend him, and she said the wound was none other than the bite of a wolf. And she told my mother that and she knew, then, that our family was being guarded. And I believe it, too, I was never even looked at till I was grown….’  
  
….data does support an abnormally low incidence of the crimes listed above in the regions with a high concentration of Good Wolf tales, but naturally we must assume that the presence of the tales is the reason for this trend, and not any factual existence of a white wolf/Good Wolf/huntsman-wolf figure….

**Author's Note:**

> Comments from Tumblr:
> 
> #I guess this counts as werewolf Jack #also there's some nice fake academic excerpts at the end if you like that sort of thing 
> 
> citrus-adventures reblogged this from gretchensinister and added:  
AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAACONTINUE PLEASEEEEEEEEEEEEE


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